Area of Suspicion

Chapter 15

The hotel made me restless. I wished I had asked her to quit. My raincoat was in my room. I went to the elevators. One came up from the basement level, the Copper Lounge level. The starter motioned me toward it. The door opened and I got in. Colonel Dolson was in there. A husky bellhop and a waiter were supporting him, one holding each arm. His cropped gray hair still had an authoritative bristle, but the face was sagging and lost, the eyes dull. The front of his beautifully tailored uniform jacket was smeared, and his smell was nauseous.

“You shouldn’t have stopped for anybody,” the waiter said to the operator.

“You shoulda took him up in the freight cage,” the operator said.

“Just run your elevator, sonny,” the waiter said.

Dolson stared at the elevator floor. He mumbled and breathed wetly through his mouth. He didn’t recognize me, and I couldn’t understand what he was saying.

They got off at six. When the door slid shut, I asked the operator if they had to take him very far.

“Just to six-eleven, around the first corner. Imagine a guy like that! He wants to get stinking, he ought to wear civvies. He don’t have to wear the uniform all the time.”

“Does it happen often?”

“I never see him that bad before. Now they got to strip him and drop him in the sack. Special service. Courtesy of the hotel.”

I got off at my floor and got my coat. The telephone rang. When I answered it, there was no one there. I smoked a cigarette, wondering about the call, feeling uneasy about it, and then heard the cautious rattle of fingernails against my door. I opened it. Hildy was standing there, brown eyes wide. She came in quickly and closed the door and leaned against it. She was wearing a yellow dress, one obviously styled for the lounge. Over it she wore a polo coat, too large for her, unbuttoned, the sleeves turned up above her wrists.

“Something,” she said, “depth-bombed the good Colonel.”

“I saw him in the elevator.”

“Then you know the condition. Messy, wasn’t he? You’ve been interested in him, so I thought you ought to know this. Tonight was the night. He leaned pretty hard on me. Just pack a little bag, dear. We’ll start in my car. Acapulco, Rio, the Argentine. He couldn’t believe my no was final. He offered one other inducement, Gevan. A sheaf of bills — of large, coarse, crude money. Honest to God, I never saw so much money all at one time since I was a little kid and my daddy took me through the Mint with all the other tourists. Maybe there’s larceny in my heart. For five seconds I was thinking about going along for the ride and the off-chance of rolling him.”

“Do you think he actually intends to take off, Hildy?”

“Yes. He can’t act that good. When the money didn’t work, he started drinking too fast and he told me that somebody had told him everything was set, whatever that means. And he said that, by God, he was no fool and he wasn’t going to wait around and be a clay pigeon for anybody, by God. He knew when the sign said the end of the road, and this was it.”

“Now he’s too drunk to go any place,” I said.

“Maybe some of that load is my fault. He kept insisting I, give him some reason why I wouldn’t go with him. I finally gave him the reason. I told him every time he put his hand on me it made me feel like the time I was a little kid and Buddy Higgins from across the street put an angleworm in my bathing suit.”

“God!”

“I know. Maybe it was too rough. Something was fracturing him and that finished him. He wasn’t lucid very long after I told him that. I guess it’s best that he got so he couldn’t talk at all. I think he could spout some stuff that would make his little pal sore at him.”

“What little pal?”

She gave me a quick glance and pulled the folded-back sleeve up so she could look at her watch. “I’ve got to go sing. Could you take a look at the Colonel, Gevan, just to make sure he doesn’t fly out any windows?”

“How do I get into his room?”

She handed me a key. “With this. He forced it on me during one of his relatively sober moments. Be a good guy, Gevan. I’ve got to run.”

“Do you want a report?”

“Please.”

After she left for the elevators, I went in the opposite direction, toward the stairs. I went down to the sixth and found six-eleven. I knocked and listened with my ear against the door panel, then let myself in. They’d taken off his jacket, tie, and shoes and put him on the bed. He didn’t stir when I turned the lights on. I made a careful search. I found a .45 Colt in the bureau, complete with web belt, holster, and extra clips. I thumbed his eyelid up. He was too far gone to twitch. He blew bubbles in the corner of his mouth. The Colonel was a careful man. There was nothing in the room to incriminate him. So I took a look through his pockets. All Army officers come equipped with little black notebooks for their shirt pockets. I stood over him and thumbed through his little black notebook.

Most of the pages were full of unimportant stuff. Memos about appointments. Shopping lists. There were two pages of names in the back. Josie, Annabelle, Alma, Judy, Moira, and so on. The names had one, two, or three stars. Alma had four stars. The colonel’s code. I replaced this notebook, pulled the blanket down, and levered him over onto his stomach. I pried his wallet out of his hip pocket. He had sixty-three dollars, and enough membership cards to prove he was a joiner. I put the wallet back. I had just covered him up again when I heard a key in the door. Joe Gardland came in. The husky bellhop was behind him. Joe registered acute surprise.

“What the hell are you doing in here, Gevvy?”

“A friend of the Colonel’s asked me to take a look at him and see if he was all right.”

“How did you get in?”

“The friend gave me a key. Here. You want it?”

Joe took it and handed it to the bellhop. “Here you go, Willy. Leave it off at the desk.” The bellhop looked nervous. He took the key and nodded and left.

Joe shut the door. “Is he okay?”

“Except for the head he’s going to have.”

Joe stared at the unconscious officer. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his forehead. “Once in a long while,” he said, “a hotel owner gets a break. Not often. Just once in a while. Willy is a good boy. He decided the Colonel would like his jacket cleaned. On the way down, Willy finds a fat envelope in the inside pocket. He takes a look in the envelope and sees money. So he does the right thing. He brings it to me. Thank God he didn’t count it. If he had, I’d never have seen him again. Even a nice boy like Willy has a price. I take the envelope into my office. I start counting. Pretty soon I start sweating. I can’t get it into the safe fast enough, and I don’t even like having it there. I come to wake him up and tell him the dough is safe. What are they paying colonels lately, anyway?”

“Not that much, Joe.”

He walked over and took a close look at the body. “This bird-colonel is really a bird, Gevvy. He has a built-in wolf call. Around four o’clock he had to come back from the plant and have a chat with the police. They tied him in with the little girl who took a leap off the bridge. You know about that?”

“Yes. I knew her. Was Dolson mentioned in her suicide note?”

“No. The way I understand it, they’d been seen around. Not lately, though. They were seen in clubs and so on.”

“How did Dolson make out with the police?”

“I got a report. I have to keep in touch when there’s a chance I might get some bad publicity for the hotel. He was very manly with them. Straight-from-the-shoulder stuff. ‘Yes, men, I knew the little girl. Yes, indeed. Like a daughter to me. Lonely, you know. Took her around a bit until she got better acquainted here. Helped her morale.’ ”

“Did they buy that?”

“I guess they had to. Anyway, even if they figured he’d been jumping her, they wouldn’t want to smear up his career. I don’t like the son of a bitch, but he is decorative around here. Until tonight. It doesn’t look like he’ll wake up in a hurry, does it?”

“Not for hours.”

“I usually get along good with the military, Gevvy. Most of the brass is okay. Once in a while you get one of these. Eagles on his shoulders, and he thinks he’s the Second Coming. I’ll bet you in his home town they’d blackball him at the Lion’s Club. Then all of a sudden he’s back in uniform and he’s a social lion. Knows every headwaiter in town.”

“Will you do me a favor, Joe? He’s going to wake up and find the money missing and come yelling to you. I want you to stall him.”

“How, for God’s sake? He’ll run to the cops.”

“He might not. He might be very easy to stall. Think up some excuse. Maybe you took it to the bank for safekeeping.”

Joe was quick. “Could be the money is not the Colonel’s?”

“Could be.”

“I want to ask questions, but I can tell by that look in your eye you’re not going to answer them. Okay, I’ll do it. I’m getting soft in the head anyway. Let’s get out of here.”

We rode down in the elevator. Joe got off at the lobby. I went down the next level and into the Copper Lounge. I stood just inside the door. Hildy was singing “All of Me.” When I caught her eye, I held up a circle of thumb and finger. She nodded.

I went through the tunnel to the hotel garage and waited by the ramp until my rented car was brought down. I was too early at the plant. There were lights on in the offices. A second shift was going full blast in C and B buildings. I turned off the car lights and slouched in the seat and lit a cigarette. I was parked directly across from the main entrance. I wondered if the time had come when I should stop nosing around independently. It might be wise, first thing in the morning, to go to the regional office of the FBI and speak to the Special Agent in Charge, and give him what I knew about Acme Supply. If it didn’t fall within their jurisdiction, they could put me in touch with the right organization. Men from the General Accounting Office would come to the plant and make a complete audit of all vouchers and payments on the D4D contract. The money in Joe’s safe could be impounded, and they could ask the Colonel how he happened to have that much money in cash. Alma was dead, but Perry and I could swear to what she had told us. Perry could inform them of the missing files. And the Colonel would be soon drawing a set of coveralls from the supply counter at Leavenworth.

I was on my third cigarette when Perry came out, slim against the lights behind her, pausing at the top of the steps. I turned on the lights and beeped the horn. She came hurrying across the street, and in the slant of street lights I saw her smiling.

With Perry beside me, and the April rain dotting the windshield between slow strokes of the wipers, I drove through the center of town and out South River Boulevard. Perry sat half-facing me, her knees pulled up on the seat, and listened without interruption as I told her what had happened and what I suspected. When I stopped for a light I looked over at her. She wore no hat and her hair looked burnished and lovely.

“What do you mean, Gevan, when you talk about the whole thing dissolving?”

“I feel that the Colonel’s racket is only a part of it. Files disappear, Alma dies, the Colonel takes off. That leaves only a mail drop, and one unidentified, obscure little man. So the Colonel is caught and disgraced and imprisoned. The Army replaces him and cleans up the mess. Maybe they catch one C. Armand LeFay, and maybe they don’t. But it’s like giving the getaway car in a bank robbery a parking ticket. Lester Fitch is implicated. Niki is implicated. Mottling is implicated. I can’t see Dolson in any position of knowledge where he could drag them all in, even to save his own hide.”

“What do they get out of all this, Gevan?”

“It’s becoming obvious. They get access to the most carefully guarded secret of all — the production rate of the D4D. It gives them the chance to foul up the production program, and sabotage what we produce.”

I took a quick glance at her as we passed the glaring lights of a shopping center. Her head was tilted and she was giving me an odd, puzzled, almost pitying smile.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Gevan, really! I mean isn’t that a little too much?”

“It’s been a cold war so long, Perry, too many people have forgotten it’s a war. We’re leery of dramatics. Too many commy hunts have made the whole bit unfashionable. Warring ideologies are in stasis, Perry. Tell me why?”

“Well... I suppose it’s because if anybody starts anything, we’ll destroy each other.”

“Okay so far. Now assume that in spite of Cuba and the Congo and all the rest of it, they get the idea they’re losing ground in the cold war. Would they give up?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Just suppose, Perry, that a year and a half or two years, the Kremlin decided they have to take the risk of turning it into a hot war. What would they do? They would intensify all espionage activities. We know they’ve done that. They would yell about peace, about the impossibility of nuclear war, and their earnest desire to compete economically. They’re doing that. And let’s try to take a shrewd guess about their third step. I think they would commit their most valuable agents, the ones who’ve never been given an assignment, the ones who’ve worked themselves carefully and deeply into our industrial, scientific and military structure. When they’ve pulled enough of our teeth, and gently loosened the rest of them, they can take the most horrible gamble the world has ever seen, and convince those historians who survive that we started it. How many Mottlings, after all the years of waiting, have suddenly been put to work?”

“But what can he...”

“The D4D is part of the guidance and control system for an ICBM which we can assume operational. They’re doubtless being made elsewhere too. Maybe there are even alternate designs. But they stuck Stanley Mottling on this one.”

“What... how could he...”

“First he rides the top production brains out of the picture. Poulson, Fitz, Garroway and the others. He replaces them with fools, stooges and conspirators. Next he corrupts the Colonel, and that is easy because the Colonel is a vain, stupid, greedy little man. On his own I doubt he could figure out how to ream the government. So Mottling maybe made the plausible suggestion of renting outside storage space, then adjusted procedures to give Dolson a freer hand with purchase orders, then had LeFay contact him on the outside and show him the way to wealth and plenty. And one day Dolson found out Mottling owned him, the way a man owns a dog, and Mottling started to use him. Remember, Dolson is contracting officer, inspection officer and shipping officer. Change a few specs, bitch a few dimensions, and you’re in the business of manufacturing intercontinental duds. Dolson could divert the few good ones to Canaveral, or wherever they test them by seeing how they fly.”

“It sounds as if... you really know.”

“When the big guess is right, Perry, all the little mysteries make sense. Ken was a wooden executive, but he was a damn fine engineer. I think he finally caught on. And they had to shut him up quickly.”

“Horrible!” she whispered.

“If they could keep twenty Mottlings busy for one year, they could afford to pull the string, Perry. They’d bang us twenty to one. They’d have some wounds to lick, but we’d be stone cold dead.”

I’d been driving so automatically I had to check landmarks to find out where I was. I recognized a country road that turned off to the right, and remembered it as the way we used to get to the river long ago, the place to take a gal who gave the slightest promise of co-operation, a place of beer and blankets and clumsy ecstasies.

As I turned into the road, I said, “Know this place?”

“If you hadn’t depressed me so much, I’d try to make jokes, like asking you what kind of girl you think I am anyhow. But this doesn’t seem to be the night for jolly patter, Gevan.”

We rode the four miles to the riverbank in silence. There were three other cars parked there, widely spaced, lights out, facing the dark oiled flow of the river. I lighted two cigarettes and gave one to Perry, pleased to find she had the gift of silence and the wisdom to know when it was necessary.

I had been thinking aloud when I had talked to her. It was like the old days. Ideas had always flowed more freely when I had been dictating to her.

It was ironic that it had been Lester who had triggered my conjecture with his innocent use of the word sabotage. It had embarrassed me to bring that idea up when talking to Mort Brice about Mottling. We’re all too afraid of being thought dramatic. We’re terrified of being thought ridiculous.

It all made sense when I began to think of Mottling as a man who had lived a life that was a triumph of misdirection. They would commit such a man only when the gamble became important enough, the same way, long ago, they had finally committed Klaus Fuchs. I could not waste my energy fretting about Mottling’s motives. If I was right, something had twisted him, irreparably, too many years ago. The pipe and shaggy tweed hid an incurable sickness of the soul.

Obviously, Mottling would be provided with all the highly trained people he could use. Others, like Fitch and Dolson, could be corrupted and enlisted and forced to serve. And, because he was of the utmost importance, every effort would be made to keep him well in the clear, above suspicion.

Suddenly I had a frightening appreciation of how careful their planning was. It had to go back at least five years, to a decision made to infiltrate a big heavy-industry corporation being run by a pair of bachelor brothers. A woman was an obvious wedge. A special woman, clever, dedicated, merciless and superbly trained. She needed an identity, so they searched until they found a friendless girl without family, in Cleveland, who matched closely enough in age and size. The real Niki Webb gave up her name and her life, and I succumbed to the wiles of an expert, masterful as a grub worm in a hen run.

Ken and I, at that time, made a hell of a good team. She had a long and intimate chance to appraise me, and perhaps she decided I was too strong and too able. So she arranged her surprise party, after giving Ken the treatment that had been so effective with me. She couldn’t know how it would come out. I might have killed one of them or both of them. The result would have been the same — to make Dean Products more vulnerable by destroying able management. I destroyed it when I walked out. So she married Ken and slowly gutted him, and made room for Mottling to come in when it was time.

But Ken fooled them. He figured it out, and they had to kill him. And it was disconcerting to learn I was no beach bum. They had thrown everything at me, including Niki, and nothing had worked, so they had tried with the truck, and that hadn’t worked.

Now, maybe, they were sweating. I’d stirred up too much. I’d caused them to fold the Dolson swindle, empty the files and kill Dolson’s blonde playmate. They would have to protect all the apparatus they had left. I shuddered.

“Somebody walked over your grave,” Perry said. My eyes had become accustomed to that faint light cast by the reflection of the distant city on the overcast. The rain had stopped again. She sat facing me, her back against the far door, her legs curled on the seat. When she raised her cigarette to her lips, the red glow of inhalation exposed the pleasant girlish structure of her face.

“Wherever the grave is,” I said, “I hope it’s a long time waiting for me.”

“The good die young,” she said with a throaty amusement. “Feel safe.”

In the new silence I was aware of how comfortable I was with her. I felt no need to strut, protest, strike attitudes, invent gambits. She knew me well, so well I could afford the rare luxury of being entirely myself. In the warmth and relaxation of that relationship I grew pleasantly aware of her in a physical way. She was girl-in-the-dark, nubile, fragrant — a slender, quick-minded copper-blonde who had become dear to me long before there was any of this awareness. I felt a special stir of tenderness toward her.

“It was so unreal to me when you were talking, Gevan,” she said. “It all sounded wild and mad. That business of gray eyes and blue eyes, and Niki being somebody else — I wondered if you were losing your mind. But... every minute it seems more real and true. I remember something. I think it fits.”

“In what way?”

“I told you the other night how much I hated her after you started to date her. I used to yearn for ugly, terrible things to happen to her. She seemed so... invulnerable. We used to talk about her. She was polite and friendly to all the other girls, but nobody could get an inch closer to her. She seemed to be laughing at all of us, somehow. There was a lot of gossip... on account of the way she got her job. She made us all feel inadequate. There was a strangeness about her we all sensed. She didn’t seem entirely real. One of the girls was from Cleveland too, and about the same age. She kept trying to pump Niki, to find out more about her, and we kept egging the girl on. Niki was polite and evasive. One day the girl cornered her, alone, in the second floor stock room, determined to pin Niki down. We never found out what actually happened. When the girl came back to her desk she acted frightened out of her wits. She was chalky and shaking, and she moved strangely, as if she’d been hurt somehow. In the middle of the afternoon she suddenly had hysterics and went home. Two days later she gave notice. She wouldn’t tell us what happened. She wouldn’t even talk about it. It made Niki seem more eerie than ever. When I found out you were going to marry her, I knew with all my heart that it was a dreadful mistake. I didn’t know why. I just knew it. It seems to fit, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I’m so glad you didn’t marry her, Gevan. I’m so glad you didn’t have that kind of relationship with her. She’s like... some kind of animal, different from all the rest of us.”

I thought of white quilted plastic, the black line of poplars watching us, the sliding scent of the sun oil, the narrow scabs on my back. The vividness of my total recall seemed as inexcusable at this time and place as if I had shouted an obscenity into the silence. Yet so complete was my reappraisal of the dark, compelling magic of Niki that I had the feeling of being convalescent. I had gone under a strange knife. A rotten place had been cleaned and drained. With proper care and caution, I could live a long life.

“I never knew her at all,” I said.

“I don’t think your brother did, either.”

“Would you sneer at an act of total cowardice, Perry? Excuse me, dammit, but that Perry name doesn’t set quite right. Joan fits so much better.”

“Joan is family. Perry is kind of a public name. It sounds better to me for you to call me Joan. What am I supposed to sneer at?”

“I’ve brought you to an old-timey necking spot, and now I think I’ll take you to a motel.”

“This is terribly sudden. I can’t imagine such a thing. What kind of a girl do you think I am? Pick a nice pretty motel, huh?”

“No joke. We’re out of town and we’ll keep going. I’m not the hero type. The conspiracy is too big and too tough and too ruthless. We’ll make some miles, and then you can phone your mother and tell some feeble lies, and then we’ll make more miles, and we’ll hole up, in two widely separated rooms, if you say so. In the morning we start making long-distance phone calls from wherever we are, some of them to people who will remember me and listen to me. We’ll come back after the Feds have the situation in hand.”

I was barely able to see her nod before she spoke. “I’ve always thought heroes would be very dull people, Gevan. I got over wanting one when I was eleven. If, in all your guesses, you’re only twenty per cent right, it is still a very good time to go hide. And afterward, Gevan, there is another thing you are going to do. I took a lot of orders from you in bygone days. Now you take one from me, sir. You haven’t been proud of yourself for a long time. You haven’t been pleased with yourself. You haven’t had any basic, important satisfactions. So I’m ordering you to go back to work where you belong, and do the job you were meant to do, and stop being a forlorn, dramatic, bored guy.”

I sat waiting for my own anger, annoyance and indignation. Enough people had been prodding me. But I thought of going back, and I felt a hollow fluttering of excitement and anticipation in my belly.

“You are a marvel, Miss Joan. As long as it’s an order, ma’am, I’ll obey it, ma’am.”

She laughed with her gladness. I reached on impulse and took hold of her wrist. I had wanted to pull her toward me, with some vague idea of sealing this vow with a kiss that would be light and quick and gay. Her laughter stopped. Her wrist was warm and fine and delicate. There was a tremulous resistance in her, an audible catch of her breath.

How fine, I thought. How very fine that it should be this way, so that I can be permitted a feeling of protective tenderness, rather than to have my slightest touch bring the woman surging and bulging against me, all blurred, gasping, softening, with blinded hungry gropings, digging at me with breasts and groin, usurping the aggressive function of the male, using me with a need so animal, so unselective, that were she to be interrupted on her dogged way to her completion, it would take her long moments to remember my name.

Joan knew who I was, every moment. She said my name after the first tentative kissing, made sweet by the shy-bold curling and shift of her lips, and again, with small and breathless laughter after kneeling in the seat, her palms flat against my cheeks to hold me for the rain of kisses in quick, prodigal, random diffusion, and again, with a note of wonder, after a long and bruising time, a bittersweet ferocity, an adult hunger.

I held her then, tightly, marveling at a sweet fit of her against me, so perfect as to seem habitual, like coming home, with the silk of her hair against the angle of my jaw, our fast hearts and breathing mingled. This closeness was not enough, and I thought that perhaps the sweet and complete coupling of our bodies — which would come in our good time at some other place — might also have this same flavor of not being the ultimate closeness for us, because this time, and forever, it was the celebration of the joining of the spirit in which we were involved. Our bodies would be good with each other. We could sense that. But they, no matter how hot and keen their pleasures, would be merely symbolizing the more valid union of the souls of Gevan and Joan, rather than performing an ancient act complete in itself.

I whispered to her, “You said the big crush ended. You said you got over it.”

“Of course it ended, dear. I just didn’t tell you what it turned into. Just hold me tight, like this, for a long, long time.”

I looked beyond her, through the car window. I saw the silhouette of a faceless man. As I lunged to trip the lock on the door on her side, the door behind me was ripped open and a hard arm clamped around my throat, dragging me out from behind the wheel as Joan screamed.

I tried to grab the wheel but my hand slipped. I went back and down, the concealed running board scraping against the small of my back, my shoulders thudding against wet grass. In the endless moment of the fall, I thought of my stupidity in making no effort to find out if we were followed, no attempt to see the car that had probably hung back, lights off, following the rented sedan. And I also thought of the truck that had come barreling down on the hill when I left Niki’s house. Mottling had told her I was coming. The penalty for stupidity was high. Too high, because Joan was in it too, and the Brady girl had talked before they killed her.

The fall released the pressure on my throat. I braced my feet against the side of the car and thrust myself over in a backward somersault, swinging my legs high as I came over. My right shoe thudded against something and I heard a gasp of pain. I landed on my hands and knees, facing the car. I swung and dived forward, arms spread wide. A knee glanced off my cheek, making my eyes water, but I grabbed one leg and drove ahead hard, like a linesman.

I could hear the other cars starting up, racing motors as they left hastily, and one set of headlights swept across us just as my man went down. They had heard the screams and this was trouble and the people in the other cars wanted no part of it. Joan screamed again, and this time there was a flat quality to it, and I guessed she had been dragged out of the car on the other side. I clambered over the man as he fell and hammered down with my fist where his face should have been. My fist hit wet earth. He was like an eel. On the next try I hit him squarely and felt something give under my knuckles, felt the frightening eel-like vitality slow into thick movements. I had to get to her and stop whatever it was they were doing to her. I scrambled away from the man on the ground, felt his fingers grasp weakly at my ankle as I stumbled toward the hood of the car. I went around the hood and saw a churning shadow, heard Joan whimpering with effort and fear as I grabbed at the shadows and felt her slimness under my hands. I released her, trying to shove her out of danger, and turned to take a blow above the eye that felt as though it cracked my skull. I yelled thickly to Joan, “Run! Run!” I lunged toward the shadow which had struck me. My arms were dead and, as I grasped him, I took another blow in the dead center of my forehead. I went down onto my knees, trying to hold onto him. He struck down at the nape of my neck and I slid my face into the wet grass. My slack fingers had slid to his ankle. I groaned and yanked the ankle toward me and bit it as hard as I could, the wool of the sock in my teeth. He yelled and kicked free and I rolled toward the bigger shadow of the car and, like a bruised animal hunting a hole, I wormed under the car. I took two deep, gasping breaths and wiggled on out the other side, my shoulder banging something on the underside of the car.

There was a silence. The rain came again, whispering along the river. I crouched, my knuckles against the wet grass, wetness soaking through one knee. I came silently to my feet, my head clearing. The river made wet, sucking sounds against the bank. A boat hooted, far away. I listened for some sound from Joan. Suddenly I heard a gasp and quick running footsteps in the grass. A flashlight clicked on and the beam swept toward the rear of the car, swept on out and pinned Perry as she ran across the rutted grass. She ran fleetly, like a slim boy.

There was an odd sound. A sort of whistling chunk. Joan’s scissoring legs made one more stride and she pitched forward onto her face in the grass, falling in a boneless, nightmare way.

The light went off.

I went around the car, my shoes skidding and slipping on the grass, half-hearing the noise I was making in my throat as I strained toward a shadow, reaching for it, feeling my finger tips brush fabric. The tears of rage were running out of my eyes. I ran slam into the front end of a black locomotive. It thundered over me and ground me down into darkness, rolled me into something small and black that bounded along the ties between the roaring steel wheels.

The train rumbled off into an echoing distance. I was in a car. I slumped sideways in the back seat. Something pressed warm and heavy against my thigh. I crawled my hand along and touched it, traced a smooth cheek, brushed hair of silk. The car moved, uneasily. It seemed to waddle like something fat and tired and old. I squinted toward the front seat. It was an old joke. Nobody was driving, mister. We were all sitting in the back seat. The car bumped and moved again. Somebody expelled breath in a sharp whistle of effort. The hood tipped down suddenly, pitching me forward toward the back of the driver’s seat. I could look down the gleam of the hood and I saw it glide down into the black mirror of the river surface, and I saw the black mirror, swirled and broken, slide up and cover the windshield and the world. The car tilted slow, unsupported, and it glided down in slow motion, like a trick movie shot of a car going off a cliff.

It nudged bottom gently and swayed, and swayed some more, and folded softly over onto its weary side, down in the darkness, down in the river, where death was a hard, thin hissing as the water gushed in through a dozen places, spattering my face, rising up my side. It had been a slow dream, mildly amusing, and I had been a spectator, watching it all in entranced numbness. But the cold hard jet of water from the window nearest me smashed into my face and brought me back to alertness — and panic.

There was some air trapped in the car, but it was going quickly. My mind started to work. I ripped off the constricting jacket, reached down and pulled my shoes off underwater. I remembered it was a two-door sedan. I got hold of her and shoved her toward the vertical dashboard. I took a deep breath of the precious air and shoved myself forward in the car. I braced my feet against the door, reached up and got the door handle of the door on the driver’s side, the one uppermost. The girl was under water. I couldn’t force the door. I risked one more breath, knowing that when the last of the air was gone the pressure would be equalized and the door would open if it was not sprung. I found the window crank and turned it. The air bubbled up and the black water closed around me, the pressure humming in my ears. I thrust against the door. It opened. I got girl around the waist.

I bulled up against the door and worked through it, pulling on the girl. She got caught somehow. I tugged hard, and she came free. As we went upward through the door, it tried to close on my feet like something alive, trying to bite. I tore free. I clawed upward through chill layers of water that pressed hard in my ears. I kept kicking, holding her, pulling at the water with my free hand, and it was a nightmare of climbing up a ladder with rubber rungs.

My lungs were straining against my locked throat and I knew soon there would be no more will to keep my throat locked and the black water would come in.

My head broke through into the cold moist air of the rainy night. I gasped out the staleness and sucked the good air deep. The light was faint. The current was taking us, and the shore trees moved slowly by against the glow of the distant city. I found I was holding her wrong, holding her with her head under water. I turned her around, with her face in the air. I cupped one hand under her chin and towed her on her back, angling toward shore. The bank was too steep. I couldn’t get any hold on it. She slipped away from me and I reached and caught her just as she was slipping under the surface. I floated with her, straining for the bank. My feet touched. I stood in waist-deep water. I pushed her ahead of me, forcing her upward against the bank. I used roots to claw my way up. I shoved her over the crest and dragged her to a level space and straightened out her body and rolled her over onto her face, adjusting her arms and legs the way the book says. I put my finger in her slack mouth and hooked her tongue forward so she wouldn’t swallow it.

I knelt with one knee between her legs. I pressed down and forward against the rib cage just above the small of her back, slowly increasing the pressure, then slid my hands back quickly, hooked my fingers on the ridges of hip bone and lifted her pelvis and diaphragm on the reverse count, to suck fresh air back into slack lungs. At first I was trembling so badly from effort, the rhythm was uncertain. Then I began to steady into it. Press — one, two, three. Lift — one, two, three. Press — one, two, three. Lift — one, two, three. I did not let myself think I was working on a body that was dead when it went into the river. I had a vision of the back of her head smashed under the soft copper hair, smashed by the thing that had whistled and thudded and tumbled her like a rag doll. But there was no light and I could not see, and I was doing the only thing I could do, and it was better not to think about it.

There was no time, no clocks, no night. Existence was divided into two motions: press-lift. I worked over her. My arms were clumsy, bloated things. The small of my back was like a tooth broken down to the nerves. I had no thought of stopping. It became a mania. I could not remember why I was doing this. I worked with my eyes squeezed against the pain, my jaw sagging.

She made a choking, coughing sound, and she whispered and stirred under my hands. I rested my hands on her, lightly, and felt the swell and fall of her breathing. I found her pulse. It was slow and steady. I crawled away from her and pitched forward, my cheek against the mud. Nausea curled inside me and faded. I wept with weakness. After a time I crawled back to her. I fingered the back of her head, and felt the stickiness.

I stood up weakly and saw, far off, golden rectangles of lighted windows. They were home, and fireside. I gathered her up. She seemed very heavy. She was unconscious. I fumbled over two fences, carrying her. I dropped her once and told her aloud that I was sorry about being so clumsy. I picked her up again.

Chickens made querulous sounds in their sleep. A dog came charging out, yapping in valiant hysteria. See me, the brave dog, defending my land. Hear my bold voice.

A hard, white yard light went on and there was a big barn shape near me, with a smell of tractors. I tripped and caught myself.

“Who’s that? Who’s out there?” a man yelled.

“Accident!” I croaked. “River.”

I came into the cone of light. A gaunt man peered at me. He took two long strides and caught Perry as she started to slip away from me again.

I followed him into the kitchen. The house was full of kids. The television was on. The kitchen tilted slowly and the linoleum hammered the side of my head. I tried slowly and laboriously to get up and somebody helped me, saying, “Easy does it! Easy does it!”

I smiled to show I was just fine. I leaned on him and said carefully, “Please... get a doctor. Phone Arland Police. Get hold of Portugal... Sergeant Portugal. Nobody else, please. Tell him... Dean wants him. Tell him... how to get here.”